CAE tools have been used for many years in the design, simulation, and test of mechanical and electrical systems. These tools include such things as design, simulation, analysis, modeling, test, and manufacturing computer software. In the automotive industry, for example, a mechanical system for a vehicle may utilize computer aided design (CAD) software for the design of individual components and assemblies within the system; vehicle synthesis, analysis, and simulation (VSAS) software for use by system analysts in modeling and analyzing the system and its components; computer aided test (CAT) software for conducting specific performance tests of the design; and computer aided manufacturing (CAM) software for aiding in the manufacturing of individual components. These programs are typically third party software packages that may not contain any standardization between them in terms of data formats and input/output protocols.
Today when an analysis engineer simulates or optimizes the performance of a system on the computer, the analyst typically needs to perform a variety of tasks, including: determining system performance requirements, such as a structure's fatigue life or a vehicle's fuel economy; determining design parameters, such as a beam's cross-sectional properties or vehicle mass; obtaining or creating a model of the system relating the performance requirements to the design parameters; obtaining data for creating or instantiating the model and for performing the simulation or optimization. The analyst will also typically need to know: the sequence of tasks needed for the simulation or optimization; how to view or process the simulation or optimization results; and how to archive the model and data for future references.
Adding to the complexity of the analyst's tasks is the fact that performance requirements and design parameters are often not readily available in organized electronic format and may be related to design parameters by models of different complexities, e.g., lumped-parameter and finite volume models for a vehicle underhood compartment. Many formats may exist for the same model depending upon the choice of simulation or optimization software, and the sequence of tasks needed for the simulation or optimization are often not documented, leading to ineffective and/or inconsistent simulation or optimization results. Furthermore, access to computer resources such as processors and printers may be limited or not apparent to the analyst, and this can be particularly true in larger organizations where these resources are distributed over multiple locations.
Efforts to simplify the analyst's tasks have included the definition of Standard Work, i.e., defining a set of corporate common processes and tools required to perform the steps given above, and agreeing on a minimum set of application software commonly referred to as the Common System. The Common System typically has a fixed architecture, i.e., output from one software application is fed into another through translator software. The commands, or run scripts, needed to execute the software are custom coded. Thus, for this type of Common System architecture, the software components often can only be replaced at great cost and inconvenience to the user community. Replacing one software application with another having the same or similar basic function can take years and millions of dollars.
It is therefore a general object of this invention to provide a computerized system for network-based management of engineering projects that integrates together various computerized engineering resources.